Firstly a little about myself, on AvatarLife I went by the name of DJ NET and many people knew me as I volunteered some of my time to help others in the role of a support volunteer, I mostly helped with technical related problems as I have a strong background in IT and from 2000 - 2005 I worked in the computer security industry in the AntiVirus field and wrote security articles based on my personal research and analysis of various computer attacks including viruses, worms and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. Since 2005 I have largely just worked on my own projects including running an IRC chat site with an average of 500 unique users connected at any given time, similar in some ways to Avatarlife only it is text chat only meaning that I well understand the technical aspects of how these things work in both the front and back end. I also create and develop websites and operate other Internet services. As many know DJ'ing and live mixing music is one of my passions.
Firstly a little about myself, on AvatarLife I went by the name of DJ NET and many people knew me as I volunteered some of my time to help others in the role of a support volunteer, I mostly helped with technical related problems as I have a strong background in IT and from 2000 - 2005 I worked in the computer security industry in the AntiVirus field and wrote security articles based on my personal research and analysis of various computer attacks including viruses, worms and DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. Since 2005 I have largely just worked on my own projects including running an IRC chat site with an average of 500 unique users connected at any given time, similar in some ways to Avatarlife only it is text chat only meaning that I well understand the technical aspects of how these things work in both the front and back end. I also create and develop websites and operate other Internet services. As many know DJ'ing and live mixing music is one of my passions.
I was faced with 2 choices in this situation, either go along with the status quo and keep quiet about what I know or maintain my integrity and speak out knowing that anyone who does speak out will be banned which is why I chose to leave of my own accord along with several other people and it also means losing many hundreds of hours of work that I and others have put into my regions. Although I will lose all of my work by speaking out a clear conscience and keeping my integrity intact is worth far more to me. Although I bear AvatarLife no malice and would like to see them rectify their problems and succeed, I no longer feel that I can be associated with what is currently going on there. Several other people some of who I also represented when making an official complaint have left, you will notice that other regions have now been cleared besides my own.
To many this may come as a complete shock, to others who have raised concerns to me about an individual who is a mentor on Avatarlife and the incredulous stories and claims this individual has made, we will examine a few of these fictions later on. I believe firstly that we can all agree that someone who tells lies can also not be trusted, even more so when the individual has unfettered access to your personal user data. Members of staff have access to various features that are not available to normal users, in fact they hand out access to this data like candy without any form of verification, background check or signing of a Non Disclosure Agreement (NDA), namely to all the IP Addresses you have used to login with, accounts that have used the same ip address to login with, as in any alt accounts that you may have, the same with your mac address and also geographic location (where the IP block your IP address resides in is in the IP Geolocation database). Firstly the above do have some legitimate usage as in so that people cannot simply generate alts to claim extra free land parcels. As a volunteer staff member I also had full access to these features as well as to support tickets before leaving, if you verify your account and upload your personal ID it is a support ticket accessible by all staff members, this in itself being highly irresponsible and even more so by an untrustworthy individual and puts users at SERIOUS_RISK_OF_IDENTITY_THEFT. My contention has always been that the less people who have access to this the better. It is not a requirement to have submitted personal identification before becoming a staff member, so the sad truth here is that you or AvatarLife do not actually even know who is accessing this data, it could be anyone as no checks are ever performed before granting access.
I voiced my valid concerns about this and protecting users privacy and security as per the published Terms of Service to Sushant and my concerns were simply brushed off as "Even if he is a liar" "Work wise teach has been invaluable to us" and "what is he going to do with this information anyway" and completely disregarding the fact that he is a serial liar and cannot be trusted. Sushant is a nice guy, my perception of him is of an honest person that tries to do the right thing and gives people many chances, unfortunately defending someone who is a proven liar and giving them the benefit of the doubt is entirely the wrong thing to do whilst still allowing them access to the personal data of all Avatar Life users. He informed Sushant that 3 people logged into the Simon Linden account, the Linden that he claims to have been. However only 1 person has access to the account and when they leave employment with Linden Labs the account is closed. Can you imagine the Director of Engineering having an account shared by 2 additional people when to avoid any confusion with whether you are talking to a Director or low level support staff they could easily give each person their own account which is entirely what they do. The reason being each person is accountable for what they say and do on that avatar, can you imagine sending a message to the Director of a department only to be answered by Teach with incoherent word salad?
From the terms of service page: "Privacy Policy and Cookies
We respect your privacy very seriously."
https://avatarlife.com/termsofservice
Your Privacy and Personal Data and Cookies
We look after your privacy, your personal data, and cybersecurity very seriously. We do not share your data with anyone such as marketing firms. When you visit our website, we do not store your IP addresses. We use a British server hosting company to store data. By registering an account with us, you give us consent to store and transfer your data. When you log in our Virtual world with our viewer, we keep a log of the IP addresses of the people who log in and at what time. However, we do not connect (link) this IP address on this log to your registered account/username. This IP addresses log is deleted weekly. A very big theme of the EUGDPR is to take measures to avoid a person being able to be identified and located in his/her real life. Both direct data (such as the actual names and addresses of the person) and indirect data such as usernames, IP addresses and cookies need to be looked after very securely. We will be encrypting the data that we have about you. We employ a high standard of security related to our website and our viewer such as a good firewall and other security measures for your and our protection. Please read our Cookies Policy below.
Notice it says in the above excerpt "we keep a log of the IP addresses of the people who log in and at what time. However, we do not connect (link) this IP address on this log to your registered account/username. This IP addresses log is deleted weekly. A very big theme of the EUGDPR is to take measures to avoid a person being able to be identified and located in his/her real life. Both direct data (such as the actual names and addresses of the person) and indirect data such as usernames, IP addresses and cookies need to be looked after very securely."
This is completely untrue as your IP addresses are retained permanently and this is how they link you to alternate accounts and track your complete login history etc. Below is a screenshot of the website admin panel showing how this data is retained and that the claims above are simply untrue. Important information masked for user privacy.
Claims to have been a Linden on SL, Simon Linden no less, this he claimed not once, but twice! in a staff meeting in front of other staff members. Simon Linden was the Director of Engineering on SL, his role was developing the simulator software, adding new features, improvements, rollouts of updates and the API for LSL scripting. Simon Linden joined SL in 2007, Teach claims he joined SL in circa 2001 when it was Linden Worlds and performed the initial beta testing for Second Life.
"[2024/12/18 14:58] Teach Hellfire: erm (Staff Member 1) that was the 1 year june 23 2003
[2024/12/18 14:58] Staff Member 1: and we all were fugly
[2024/12/18 14:59] Staff Member 2: hahahahah
[2024/12/18 14:59] Staff Member 1: no it started june 2003
[2024/12/18 14:59] Staff Member 1: i joined in dec same yr
[2024/12/18 14:59] Teach Hellfire: we beta tested for a year first
[2024/12/18 15:00] Teach Hellfire: may 27 2002 is when foorst secondlife sever went live
[2024/12/18 15:00] Staff Member 1: Developed for personal computers and owned by the San Francisco-based firm Linden Lab, it launched on June 23, 2003 and saw rapid growth for some years; in 2013 it had approximately one million regular users.
[2024/12/18 15:00] Staff Member 1: oww i was not a beta tester
[2024/12/18 15:00] Staff Member 2: Teach you were a Linden?
[2024/12/18 15:00] Teach Hellfire: yes i was simon
[2024/12/18 15:00] Staff Member 1: the beta testers became lindens right Teach
[2024/12/18 15:01] Teach Hellfire: not all no
[2024/12/18 15:01] Staff Member 1: oww then i spoke with you many times
[2024/12/18 15:01] Staff Member 2: I remember a Sion at some point lol
[2024/12/18 15:01] Staff Member 2: Simon*
[2024/12/18 15:01] Teach Hellfire: yes i know mits that why i said old friend when we met
[2024/12/18 15:01] Staff Member 1: lol
[2024/12/18 15:01] Staff Member 1: we sl dirt old
[2024/12/18 15:02] Teach Hellfire: i wownt say who but thers ony 3 ppl here i didnt meet first as simon
[2024/12/18 15:02] Teach Hellfire: I spent 6 years looking for sl alternatives afre quiting
[2024/12/18 15:03] Staff Member 2: I found Avaratlife because someone fro Avatarlife im´d my alt lol"
The real Simon Linden was an American, spoke using technical terms and was an accomplished coder with an in depth understanding of how the various simulators worked, he also worked out of the San Francisco office in USA, Teach is British. He also used American terminology and spelling and could communicate without a word salad of incomprehensible illiterate nonsense and typos. Having read many logs of SL community meetings where Simon Linden spoke it is obvious within just a few seconds that Teach and him are not the same person. Simon Linden frequently uses "..." in sentences to divide them up, used_underscores_like_so to highlight important things. I will provide links to the logs of some of these meetings, Simon Linden was a busy person, often working and in meetings rather than playing in world. People bearing the Linden name were actively discouraged from having too many relationships in world as these accounts were for their professional duties.
You can read many of the archived chat logs from group meetings that the real Simon Linden attended here, notice that he sounds absolutely nothing like Teach Hellfire, is intelligent, is not illiterate and actually_knows_what_he_is_talking_about.
https://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Simulator_User_Group
Start reading from the November dates. It will very quickly become apparent that Teach Hellfire and Simon Linden are 2 completely different people.
Simon Linden wore a top hat, since Teach finally mentioned in a staff meeting which Linden he was supposed to have been and must have googled him for more information, he has started wearing a hat now as the real Simon Linden was known for always wearing a hat that when clicked gave a prize.
"Simon Linden is a developer at Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life, a virtual world platform. He has been involved in various technical aspects of Second Life, including server performance and region management. One of his notable contributions is the implementation of "region idling," a feature designed to optimize server resources by reducing the processing power allocated to inactive regions, thereby enhancing overall system performance.
Simon actively participates in the Second Life community, engaging in discussions related to server performance and technical improvements. He has contributed to forums and user group meetings, providing insights into ongoing projects and addressing user concerns. For instance, he has been involved in discussions about the Puppetry Project, which aims to enhance avatar expressiveness through technologies like inverse kinematics and real-time motion capture.
In addition to his technical work, Simon maintains an in-world presence.
Overall, Simon Linden plays a significant role in the development and maintenance of Second Life's infrastructure, contributing to both its technical advancements and community engagement."
I have also reached out via email to 3 different individuals that worked in the San Francisco office in the same time period with Simon Linden in the software engineering department that would have certainly been colleagues of his. I will update this article with any responses I receive.
The first contact I ever had with Teach Hellfire aka DJ Tigger was when he voice called me, he claimed to work for British Intelligence Services, the claims he made were at the very least bizarre and ridiculous. He claimed that he had to go to his boss, that had to go to their boss who had to go their boss just for him to be able to speak to me. It gets even more bizarre, he then says if a certain big house in USA had a backdoor into their computer network, I asked did he mean the White House, he acknowledged with a "yes" and then went on to ask me if I would be prepared to plant incriminating evidence on their computer systems to allow the British government to have leverage over the President of the United States, him referring to the possibility of a Trump election victory. I told him that I would never do anything like that. Firstly it is a crime in the UK where he resides to impersonate a government official under the fraud act, it is also illegal to solicit someone to commit a crime which is exactly what he asked me to do. Can you imagine if someone gullible enough to believe his outrageous and fictional claims had attempted to do this and what kind of legal jeopardy they would find themselves in?
People that work in those services seldom talk about it as they have usually signed the official secrets act and most certainly would not be openly recruiting people to commit crimes and divulging top secret plans over an AvatarLife voice call. The level of ridiculousness literally defies comprehension. Let alone would a high up in the secret services be working on AvatarLife 18 hours a day, fantasy world anyone?
He then went on to claim that he knew me, a claim he makes to literally everyone when in fact he doesn't and never did know me and he went to great lengths trying to convince me that he did know me. He routinely does this with new people that come over from SecondLife. More on this below.
In the UK, it is unlawful to impersonate a member of the security services, including MI5 (the Security Service) and MI6 (the Secret Intelligence Service). This falls under various offenses, such as fraud or deception, and can lead to criminal charges.
Impersonating someone working for MI5 or MI6 can pose a serious threat to national security, and the law treats such actions very seriously. The relevant laws include the Fraud Act 2006, which addresses false representation, and other legislation related to national security and the protection of government officials. Penalties can include fines and imprisonment, depending on the severity of the offense.
He also claimed to be spearheading a government AI facial recognition project and went on to let me overhear a pretend conference call that he was running where nobody but him was talking and he pretended to be giving out orders and saying things like, "we need to look at all of the legal implications of this and I will refer this to our legal team" along with other completely nonsense and fictitious statements.
He also claims to be a former university professor, yes, it is right there in his profile and I think most who have had contact with him know how he likes to boast about things, according to his real life facebook page there is absolutely no information at all about what university he attended, let alone what subject he taught or at what universities or his past history of working at SecondLife as Simon Linden. He does proudly proclaim "Starting a new job at AvatarLife". Other than that his posts are about facebook browser games or the sharing of pro Jeremy Corbyn political posts. In fact very little of interest on there for someone with such a prestigious career as he claims to have to people who do not know who he really is. I am guessing that he can't post these claims on facebook because there are people who know who he really is on there and would know that it is complete fiction.
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I did some research using his real name and variations of it and found absolutely nobody in the UK that was a professor with that name or at any UK university. For someone that can barely even type a comprehensible sentence in English that isn't laced with poor spelling or typos, does anybody actually believe that he was a professor of anything?
Claims to have been an SL Hall of Fame DJ, the famous DJ Tigger, also claims to have been a DJ for 35 years and yet after hearing one of his DJ sets on AvatarLife it is apparent to me that he literally has no clue, the most noticeable being long periods of silence between each track varying in length from between a second or two to around 20 seconds. Two or three people commented to me about this. I have taught many people how to set up and DJ and one of the first things that I teach them if they will be using autoplay which is the easiest way to DJ is to go through their settings and enable 'skip silence' meaning that silence at the beginning and end of tracks is skipped and then autofade of around 3 seconds to fade out one track and fade in the next, it is called a transition. Personally I do not use any of the automatic features as I prefer to manually control my sets via hardware and seamlessly blend one track into the next. Autoplay is really no different to creating a Youtube or Spotify playlist and hitting play, job done!
For someone who claims to have been a hall of fame DJ and doing it for 35 years he appears to lack the basic understanding of how to even remove silence, this is something people I have taught have learned within the first 35 minutes.
He can't even seem to add the correct stream to the land meaning that the first 15 minutes of at least 2 of his DJ sets it had some RNB stream in which he claimed his SL daughter must have been using his stream so he had to use another of his 9 streams. The thing is here, if you connect to an active stream it disconnects the other user from it, the likelihood was he was just plugging in other DJ's streams and passing them off as his own.
Also he claimed to have played a vinyl record as part of his set, a needless and unnecessary lie aimed at impressing people where he claimed to have dug through boxes of vinyl records to find and play a request for someone, I guess he fails to understand that by default when you play a track that it announces from the meta data of the track, only digital tracks such as mp3 files etc have meta data, a source playing vinyl being non digital would not transmit meta data. Not only this but the track name was also tagged with the word (Official Video) meaning it was an mp3 that was converted from a video file into mp3 format, most likely from Youtube. So in essence he searched Youtube or similar to find the requested track, used an mp3 downloader and convertor and played it, while there is absolutely nothing wrong with that apart from copyright issues it is what most online DJ's do rather than subscribing to a DJ Pool and downloading digital music from there. The point here being that he told a completely unnecessary lie and lives in some kind of fantasy world where he actually thinks that people believe the endless lies he tells in his effort to impress people and be relevant.
[2024/12/28 18:00] DJ NET: [17:56] Now playing: Pearl Jam - Alive (Official Video)
[17:56] DJ TIGGER: tc ppl
[17:56] DJ TIGGER shouts: ok vinyl for (username)
[17:56] (Username): thx DJ !
[17:57] DJ TIGGER: sorry for delay it was in wrong box
[17:57] DJ TIGGER: no idea why it was in 80s pop
Claims to have 9 different DJ streams for him and his SL family which he claims is the biggest family on SL and of course he runs it. Whenever asked about bringing his SL family members over of which he claims there to be 1,000's of them, there are varying excuses such as when a member falls in the Hellfire family that the family do nothing for 3 weeks after, however it seemingly doesn't stop him from doing things for 3 weeks at a time.
Basically any DJ would tell you that he is a complete beginner, there is of course nothing wrong with being a beginner but why lie about it?
Once I mentioned that I was creating RLV collars for users to take for free from one of my sims, I mentioned that I was using the OSCollar scripts which are open source and free to use in your own creations. He claimed that on SL that it was him that had written the OSCollar scripts when he used to script on SL. The script was written by a Wendy Starfall and others as it is right there in the comments at the top along with the EULA licensing agreement. I was quite certain that this was just another of his false claims and I contacted the author on SL and specifically asked if a Simon Linden, any other Linden or anyone else other than mentioned in the actual script comments had written these scripts for her as claimed by Teach. I'm sure that you can guess what the answer was right? It was a resounding NO!
There must be literally no well known sim on SL that Teach didn't once own, at staff meetings and in front of other staff members he claimed that he used to own the London sim which is a very popular community sim, he has also claimed to have owned literally every big club in SL including the Exale club.
Even though I didn't believe him or did several other staff members I made enquiries on SL and again found these claims to be completely untrue.
He also claimed to as a Linden have organized the SL Christmas Events, I'm not sure why the SL Director of Engineering would be doing this but I have adequately covered this above.
Many people will have been told by Teach that he knows them, some will even be told that he made decisions about them on SL, for starters a Director of Engineering would be making decisions about the simulators and coding projects, not end users. He will tell people that he knows them, most just assume somehow he did and he will then tell me and other staff members that he knows these new people and brought them over from SL. I have had several DJ's sent to me that he told me he knew them and brought them in because they used to work at one of his many SL clubs, turns out not a single one of these people had ever worked for him or were even sure they knew him.
Teach claims that he was just on SL one day and the Teulu's came to him asking for his expert advice and opinion on Avatar Life, so he went to check it out for them, gave his approval, and the only reason they are on Avatar Life today is solely because of him. Given the many false claims he has made the likelihood is quite high that this is another of his false claims. It would be good to get some further input on this claim to verify if it is true or false. I have a pretty good idea what the answer will be.
While this is a shocking revelation that has sent ripples through some of the community and staff members, a staff member with a history of dishonesty still has access to members' personal data. Even more troubling is the fact that this alarming situation has been reported to management, who have failed to act decisively, raising serious questions about their priorities and commitment to protecting user privacy.
The individual in question, Teach Hellfire has a documented history of lying and manipulating information, making them inherently unreliable. Despite their proven dishonesty, this person retains unrestricted access to sensitive personal data of Avatar Life users, including names, contact details, and potentially payment information. This access poses a significant risk to data security and the privacy of countless individuals including a serious risk of identity theft.
Concerned staff members have raised red flags about this individual’s honesty and unbridled access to personal data. Reports detailing their history of deception were submitted to management, urging immediate action to mitigate potential risks. The expectation was that management would take swift and decisive steps to revoke the individual’s access and conduct a thorough investigation into the matter.
Instead of addressing the issue, management has chosen to shield the individual. Sushant claims the staff member is considered "useful", which has led to their behavior being overlooked. This blatant disregard for users privacy and security has not only undermined the trust of other staff members but has also put the personal information of Avatar Life users at risk and remains at risk for as long as this situation remains unaddressed and unremedied.
Management's failure to act has sparked outrage among some staff members and Avatar Life users alike, some have even left because of it including myself now. Many believe that their reluctance to address the problem stems from a desire to avoid inconvenient disruptions or a fear of losing the individual’s contributions to operations, regardless of the ethical implications.
This situation underscores a critical lapse in accountability and data protection. Avatar Life users entrust their personal information and Identifying Photo Documents to Avatar Life with the expectation that it will be properly safeguarded. Allowing an untrustworthy individual to maintain access to this information is a breach of that trust and may even violate data protection laws.
Moreover, management’s apparent willingness to shield such a person sends a dangerous message about their priorities. By valuing perceived usefulness over integrity, they risk creating a culture where unethical behavior is tolerated as long as it serves their own interests.
This incident calls for immediate action to restore trust and ensure the safety of attendees' personal data:
As this unfortunate situation unfolds, it is clear that management’s decision to shield this staff member has eroded trust in their leadership. Avatar Life users and staff deserve better: a commitment to ethical practices, transparency, and the protection of personal data. Until these issues are addressed, the reputation of the Avatar Life brand and the safety of Avatar Life users' information remain in jeopardy.
If the above steps are taken to properly ensure the privacy and security of Avatar Life users then at such time this article will have served its intended purpose and will no longer be current or valid and will be completely removed.
Suggested questions for Teach Hellfire
Which University did he supposedly attend?
Which University did he supposedly teach at?
What subject did he supposedly teach?
I will gladly pick up a phone and call any of the universities he claims to have been a professor at.
What is the name of his SL Avatar?
If he owned the London sim and all these other popular sims and huge dance clubs, then why does he not still own any of these now?
Where or how did he hold his Simon Linden group meetings?
Please feel free to share any bizarre interactions you have had with Teach Hellfire in complete confidence where he told you some outrageous story, pretended that he knew you from SL or offered to help you from the support group and then just vanished on you. I will never use your name or share anything that you shared with me in confidence without your explicit permission.
Check often for updates to this article as new information and responses come in about this fantasist.
In the meanwhile if you are interested in a paid position at Avatar Life, with full access to users personal data and immediate elevation to mentor, simply go to google, find a Linden that no longer works for Linden Labs, claim that you used to work for Secondlife as [insert some Linden Name here] and nobody will ever check up on it or ask you to provide verifiable proof. This is how easy it was for Teach Hellfire to insert himself into there as a mentor, be rewarded for lying and be given full unrestricted access to other users' personal and private data.
If you are quite rightly concerned about this matter you will find my contact details below.
I can be contacted via email at avatarlife@0-id.com